Categories
PC Gaming

Rebel Galaxy Outlaw

Completed Rebel Galaxy Outlaw.

I like the fact that ships are different, and not every more expensive ship is necessarily better. I liked hauler more than the military fighter, since those turrets can rip enemies to shreds pretty well, while still being able to sell tons of cargo at every port.

There are two annoying issues with the interface of the game. First, there’s no good indication of missile lock. But there’s no visual cue for that, unless you’re looking at the missile, which is usually not the case. And second, count of your own missiles is displayed on the same screen as enemy lock, and the coms are on the same screen as well. So when you lock on enemy, you loose missile count, and when you get a comm, you also loose track of your enemy shields. There’s so much space in the cabin they put a second screen there, but it is just the duplicate of the first one. Instead, the comms could be an overlay, like in many other space sims. But no, a single screen is all you’ve got.

Turns out that Juno’s husband wasn’t killed, just went into hiding, on Juno’s mother orders, Tatiana. She’s a pirate lady, and wants to divert the traderoutes, so her daughter would inherit a legitimate trading empire. Very kind of her. There’s an option to betray her to the police or team up with her.
It all ends up with a whimper, though. At one point, everyone is freaked out by Tatiana being able to teleport ships without a jumpgate, something no one knows how to do. But this is never explained. “Final battle” is just routing a bunch of police vessels. And then Juno tells her husband to fuck off, something very inconsequntal, since we’ve seen this dude for two cutscenes at best. And there’s no credit roll, nothing.

Categories
Nintendo Switch

Persona 5 on Switch

Managed to install Persona 5 on my Switch.
I feel like I update firmware on it more than I play it.

At first, I was getting “failed to read NSP metadata”

Fixed that by installing the latest patches. The process is super-shady, as you just copy a bunch of random files you found on the Internet.

Then, had to figure out the Master Key password in Atmosphere:
up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a, plus

That enables unsigned code installation, since the only NSP available at the moment is converted from XCI.

But it works. And the most surprising thing, it works on Firmware 12.1.0, while the latest is 15.0.0
I’m always afraid of upgrading firmwares on my Switch, as I almost bricked it once already, and lost all my saves in the process.

Categories
Nintendo PC Gaming Switch

Persona 5 for PC and Switch?

Looks like I completely missed the fact that Persona 5 is now also on PC.

And even better news, Persona 4 is planned for Switch in January as well. Dropped it on PS2, dropped it on PC, not I have a chance to drop it for the third time!

Categories
*.BAK

Wagyu

Today I finally tried the British Wagyu they sell on the Borough market.
Turns out it’s a cross between Wagyu males and Angus females. Expensive, but good. Very smooth, and with a very distinct nutty taste.
Cost around 22GBP for 270g, so about 79 for 1kg.

Categories
PC Gaming

Rebel Galaxy Outlaw

The game grew on me slightly. The story flows nicely, in a GTA-like fashion. To earn some money for our vendetta we pair with a local idiot that was asked to steal a package from his own brother.

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The package is for a mafia boss, and it contains EMP missiles, that we use to teach police a lesson. Then a former friend turns up, and asks us to help break leader of their pirate gang out of the prison. Then the new gang leader, Durgan, tries to kill the old gangleader, that we help to break out. But we kill Durgan instead.

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What I liked about the fight with Durgan, is that although there are two frigates, you only need to kill Durgan himself, and he pilots just fighter jet, although a though one. But once you kill him, others simply surrender.

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Categories
PC Gaming

Rebel Galaxy Outlaw

The original Rebel Galaxy was about battleships, which I liked. Here we have space jets and dogfights, which I like less. Luckily, there’s auto targeting, that makes the fights slightly easier.

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Signs of a serious space game: there are turrets on the ships.
Surprising that trading is actually a very viable option to get rich quickly. It’s actually easier to earn money as a trader, than by shooting pirates.

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Some nice details: sometimes after destroying an enemy ship, you can pick up the ejected pilot. Mostly for fun, as the bounty for pirates is negligible. Also, each ship has a completely unique interface. Very nice indeed.

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Storywise, it’s a space western. We play as Juno, as she avenges her husband. She even knows who killed him, just not where to find him. Story gets forgotten pretty quickly, though, as you need to spend a lot of time earning cash to buy a better ship, so it won’t get blown in a few seconds.

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Categories
*.BAK Hardware

Sage Precision Brewer

A couple of weeks ago we replaced our rather simple Russel Hobbs filter machine with a more sophisticated Sage Precision Brewer.

And boy, does it make a difference.
It doesn’t just pour boiling water, as some other brewers do. It controls water temperature using PID, like the higher-end espresso machines. The quality of coffee I get is comparable to filter coffee from Black Sheep. And it’s also easier to clean.

Potentially, it doesn’t even require paper filters. There’s a plastic basket that comes with it as well. But I got a stock of those paper filters during COVID, so I’m not sure if it’s worth to test the basket.

The downsides are that it’s huge. The tank is 1.7L, and it’s 1.7L of coffee. While we drink around 0.5L in the morning. So the pitcher always feels almost empty. I wish they had a smaller model for such cases.

Categories
Hardware

Going wireless

Must admit that until few months ago, I was worried about switching my keyboard and mouse to wireless. But it’s actually not a big deal. I get to charge the keyboard maybe every month, and it’s just for an hour, while it still works. Same for the mouse. And I don’t feel any delays, at least when the mouse is connected to the dedicated receiver. So overall, positive experience, not only for work, but also for gaming.

Categories
PC Gaming

Cultic

There is a clear Blood inspiration: bleak visual style, waking in a grave, cultists, dynamite and lighter. But then there are some more modern mechanics: reloading and upgrading weapons, physics (at one point you can throw an oil barrel down the hill killing some of the cultists) and even sliding.


I was surprised how long and varied the first level is. There’s some kind of police station, than a camp site, then mines and a den of chainsaw wielding maniac, all within a single level.

 

Shooting aspects work just right. Enemies aren’t too tough, and they have a bit of a fire delay, but if you aren’t careful, they will kill you without remorse.

 

Categories
*.AVI *.MP3

Beast in Black – Moonlight Rendezvous

This music video is so bad it’s actually good:

Categories
PC Gaming

Rise of the Tomb Raider

Ironic, that Lara supposed to be some kind of archaeologist, as she throws a Soviet truck into the abyss just to tear the door of an ancient church she was trying to get into.
The best part of the game are optional tombs. Those contain some interesting environmental puzzles. While the main storyline is mostly Lara wasting countless mercenaries.

Finished the “Baba Yaga” DLC. If there’s a single word: it’s “predictable”. But still fun, at least, with all the избушка на курьих ножках and Baba Yaga flying in her ступа.

Of course it’s the girls grandma all along, who figured out how to produce hallucinogens from plants, making all her enemies see ghosts and fables.

Categories
*.AVI

Captain America: Civil War

Clash between “two good guys” was already tried in Avengers 2, between Iron Man and Hulk. And someone decided it’s an opportunity to make an entire movie out of it. Just without Hulk.

Main conflict can be described as “Lawful Good vs Chaotic Good”. Irony being that a rather chaotic Iron Man is on the side of Lawful.


One of the main problems is that since it’s a Captain America movie, there’s a lot of Winter Soldier in it. I don’t like how Sebastian Stan plays, and his superhero is boring as well. The only interesting part about him is this piece of hardware he totes as some point:

The “threat of the week” is revealed an hour into the movie. And honestly, it doesn’t even sound that threatening. What’s a few Russian assassins after you dealer with a full scale alien invasion and an army of robots?
Twist with them being offed in their sleep is actually good, though.


Idea of a “regular guy” trying to get revenge on superheroes for inadvertently killing his family is alright. At least it’s not yet another Ultron this time.

Categories
PC Gaming

Rise of the Tomb Raider

The snow is impressive. Hair is also awesome. Everything else: not so much. Lara looks like Ellen Page.

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She’s annoyingly obsessed with her deceases father, talking to him all the time.

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The bad guys are called Trinity and are literally Templars from Assassin’s Creed. Their leader is Konstantin, a Russian with a scar. And Ana, Lara’s stepmother, is his sister.
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There are remnants of DLCs and lootboxes. So although Lara finds a scrappy Nagant revolver, she imediattely gets access to Colt Python as well. And there is some card-gacha system, which I don’t even try to understand.
It’s funny how trained mercenaries scream “Push her back!” as they see Lara. An one-girl-army.

Categories
Hardware

Neo Geo Misadventures

Can’t make this stuff up. A day after I put together my SuperGun Neo Geo setup, my consolized Neo Geo lost by Royal Mail arrives back. It was in transit since 29th of July, almost 2 months, and the Royal Mail itself admitted it was simply lost. At least that resolves my issue of not having a proper shell for my board.
Just for the fun of it, I decided to see if it boots. The reason I sent it back was that it wasn’t even showing the boot screen. And it does!
Look what 5 months in Spanish Inquisition does to you. Anyway, it shows the 00D00000x555 error:

Neo Geo MV1FZS Battery and Backup RAM Error Fix

I managed to get the malfunctioning motherboard out of the shell, and put the working motherboard inside. So now I have a fully working consolized MVS, it seems.

Categories
PC Gaming

Darksiders 3

Completed Darksiders 3.
What that game seriously lacks is any kind of self-irony. There isn’t much humor to begin with, and all of it is so… heavy.
Gluttony boss second phase was super annoying. At first I thought that I was doing something wrong, and the huge kraken wouldn’t suck down the mines. Turns out it’s just an awkward boss fight.

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And that’s not the only thing awkward in this game. Whip swings are also working maybe half of the time, which makes every platforming puzzle a huge pain.

Tornado that says “thank you” after you blow it seriously puzzled me. And not only me.

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The storytelling is bad. Fury seems to be enraged by her steed being killed. But we, as players, seen this steed for half a minute. So we can’t share those emotions.
She also doesn’t evolve as a character. At the beginning of the game, she’s rash and despises humanity simply because she’s physically superior, being a Nephilim. By the end of the game she’s also rash, but just has better skills (that’s why she manages to defeat Wrath the second time she fights him), and she’s… what, impressed by human ability to build tall buildings? Not much of a development, is it?

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You build your game around the concept of Seven Deadly Sins. Fine. But then, why Pride is their leader? Why do they even have a leader? And why Envy has four arms and wields the weapons of other Horsemen? This is completely incoherent.

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I really wanted to like that game. But besides the visuals, there really isn’t much to like.

Categories
*.DOC

Eye of the World, Robert Jordan

I’m too old for fantasy, I guess. All those names of people and places I cannot possibly spell, like “Nine-eve” or “Emmon’s Field“.
It feels like Jordan was paid by word. Can’t count the number of times he repeats the word “gleeman”. And all those passages about a song called Drunken Peddler was called Tinker in the Kitchen in this village. Why should I care?
It’s interesting that the author split Gandalf in two: there’s Moraine, who has the magic, and then there’s Tom the Gleeman, that had the talk.
The best part of the book is actually the fables. Legend about Emmon’s Field or about the wolves, or about this “King Arthur” that hated witches is far more engaging than anything else.
Matt quickly turns into a Gollum. Just with an encrusted dagger instead of a ring.
For fantasy, there’s a certain lack of imagination. They all drink tea, and smoke tobacco. Literally tobacco. And traveling people are just gypsies. And Children of the Light are just Inquisition.

Categories
Hardware

Neo Geo Misadventures

Attempt to get a shell for the motherboard turned out to be a fail. Bought MV1-B shell for MV1-A board, because there were no MV1-A shells available, and those look very similar with their parallel card slot. But MV1-B shell is slightly narrower, so MV1-A board doesn’t fit in.

But other than that: it’s alive!
The board, the card, SuperGun, PSU, gamepad – everything put together and working.
And the graphic issues are gone. This is beyond awesome.

Categories
война

Выпустят, конечно. Только не в Дубай, а под Донец. И не на долго 🥰

Ты давай там главное, не ной 😄

Categories
PC Gaming

Darksiders 3

Managed to beat Avarice, Sloth and Lust. All of those bosses aren’t spectacular, but are fine. Avarice jumps between columns and tries to hit you with a bathtub.

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Sloth is held by a lot of crabs, then is fought like any “dragon” from Dark Souls.

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Lust is your typical “fencer”, but summons a hammer-wielding angel once his health gets low.
The Kraken mini-boss was super-annoying, though. You’re told to hit the eyes, but when you hit them, nothing happens. Turns out you need to use esoteric autoaim mechanic to hit them all at once. Don’t base your bossed on mechanic you never explained properly.

Categories
*.BAK

Frozen Musical

This Friday we went to see the Frozen Musical.
Interesting details: support cast as nature elements. At the very beginning, they act as ocean waves. And at the very end they represent blizzard.
Also was impressed by the elk. There seems to be just a single person operating it standing on all fours, but it also moves its head and eyelashes. That’s some coordination.
Technically, it’s less impressive than Beauty and the Beast Musical. Maybe because the stage is more “general purpose”. There are a few objects moving from the left and right, like Elsa’s icicles, but nothing as complex.
Kids loved the snowman puppet. I was again surprised for some adult jokes, like during Prince and Anna song. But I guess you have to keep everyone entertained, not just kids.
Another surprise: Samantha Barks that plays Elsa is just 31. I was sure she looks good for her forties. But maybe it’s just the makeup.